The demand for broadband content and services worldwide is growing at a tremendous pace. Soon, traffic from wireless devices will exceed that of wired setups. Currently, high-resolution videos account for about 69 % of all data viewed on mobile devices and are expected to reach 79 % by 2020. At this pace, short-range wireless communication will soon require data transfer speeds of tens of Gbps, which current wireless technology cannot support.

A research consortium supported by the EU-funded iBROW project has made great strides towards improving connectivity between networks and wireless users.